Research article summary:

Attitudes and preferences of intensivists regarding the role of family interests in medical decision making for incompetent patients.

Abstract Extract:
OBJECTIVE: The role of family interests in medical decision making is controversial. Physicians who routinely treat incompetent patients may have preferred strategies for addressing family interests as they are encountered in surrogate medical decision ... (Full abstract text below)

Published 2003Jul in Journal: Crit Care Med (Language : eng)

Full Pubmed Extract

This information was retrieved, real-time, on your behalf from the public area of the Pubmed website:

1. Crit Care Med. 2003 Jul;31(7):1895-900

Attitudes and preferences of intensivists regarding the role of family interests in medical decision making for incompetent patients.

Hardart GE, Truog RD

Department of Anesthesia, Children's Hospital, Boston, MA, USA.

OBJECTIVE: The role of family interests in medical decision making is controversial. Physicians who routinely treat incompetent patients may have preferred strategies for addressing family interests as they are encountered in surrogate medical decision making. We sought to determine how physicians view the role of family interests in surrogate medical decision making. DESIGN: Cross-sectional mail survey. SETTING: Remote study.PATIENTS: Surveyed were neonatologists, pediatric intensivists, and medical intensivists affiliated with American medical schools. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS: A total of 327 (55%) of 596 surveys were returned; 35% of respondents were pediatric intensivists, 39% were neonatologists, and 26% were medical intensivists. The majority of respondents believed that family interests should be considered in decisions for incompetent patients, even if those interests are not necessarily important interests of the patient. Less than 10% preferred the traditional model in which the physician-patient relationship is exclusive and family interests are excluded. Medical intensivists, and those who described themselves as more religious, more opposed to healthcare rationing, and more protective of patients, tended to prefer patient-centered surrogate decision-making models. Physicians who treat children, especially neonatologists, were more accepting of family-centered surrogate decision-making models than were physicians who exclusively treat adults. CONCLUSIONS: A majority of the academic intensivists in our study believed that family interests should play an important role in medical decision making for incompetent patients. Our findings suggest that the traditional view of the physician-patient relationship may represent an overly simplistic model for medical decision making.

PMID : 12847380 [PubMed - Indexed for MEDLINE]

This information is obtained from the National Library of Medicine (NLM). Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright. Type "NLM copyright" into Google for more information.

Full Author Information

First Name	LastName	Initials
George E	Hardart	GE
Robert D	Truog	RD

Affiliation: Department of Anesthesia, Children's Hospital, Boston, MA, USA.

3rd Party provider links

Click the links below to go to related 3rd party information:

MESH categories and related page links

This article was linked to the MESH categories shown on the left below. The links on the right are related Memletics pages.

Links for this article

For links to places where you can get the full text of this article see links. Note there may be a subscription or fee required for access to the full text.

New! Using similar technology to this site, we have launched find-health-articles.com, targeting over 1 million health research article abstracts.

Here are some articles related to this one (by title keywords):

The do re mis of everyday life: the structure and personality correlates of music preferences.

Knowledge and attitudes about the differences between emergency contraception and medical abortion among middle-class women and men of reproductive age in Mexico City.

Exploring dental patients preferred roles in treatment decision-making - a novel approach.

Effects of three helmet-mounted display symbologies on unusual attitude recognition and recovery.

Differences in breast shape preferences between plastic surgeons and patients seeking breast augmentation.

The decision making process including assessment of ethical principles in the commitment of police-referred, psychiatric patients.

The contribution of postural bias to lateral preferences for holding human infants.

Anxiety, attitudes, and sex roles of male college students in a 'Buddy Program' for persons with disabilities.

Teaching epidemiology inside and outside the classroom.

The physicians role in discussing organ donation with families.

>>> Get more research article abstracts like these, or browse abstracts.

Keywords in this article:

academic, accepting, addressing, adults, affiliated, american, believed, centered, children, conclusions, considered, controversial, cross, decision, decisions, described, design, determine, encountered, even, excluded, exclusive, exclusively, family, findings, healthcare, important, incompetent, intensivists, interests, less, mail, main, majority, making, measurements, medical, model, models, more, necessarily, neonatologists, not, objective, opposed, overly, patients, pediatric, physicians, play, preferred, protective, rationing, relationship, religious, remote, represent, respondents, results, returned, role, routinely, schools, sectional, setting, simplistic, sought, strategies, study, suggest, surrogate, survey, surveyed, surveys, tended, themselves, total, traditional, treat, view, who

Also, see our new free speed reading online course (beta version)